Abstract
We report a case of school-refusal with two planned attempts at suicide due to halitophobia. The patient was a 20-year-old man whose history of the present illness revealed that he had become concerned about his breath after being bullied in junior high school at the age of fourteen. He had become incapable of having personal contact with other people and refused to go to school. He later graduated without attending junior high school, and subsequently enrolled in a correspondence high school. When he came to our clinic, however, he was currently taking time off from school. He had planned to commit suicide twice, at 17 and 19 years of age, and been admitted to a local psychiatric hospital.
The patient was referred to our department by the psychiatrist in charge of his case because no objective evidence of halitosis had been detected during the initial examination. The patient became psychologically stable and hardly concerned about his breath any more after about 6 months of oral cleaning and phased counseling, provided on a regular basis.
